


Brick by Brick, Beam by Beam

by AvaCelt



Series: Black Clover Week - 2020 [1]
Category: Black Clover - Tabata Yuki (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Berserk References, Black Clover Week, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, M/M, Old Married Couple, Past Violence, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26322409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaCelt/pseuds/AvaCelt
Summary: They're forty-five years old now. With age comes experience, back problems, and scars Yuno will never forgive himself for. [AsuYuno, future!fic, written for Black Clover Week 2020]
Relationships: Asta/Yuno (Black Clover)
Series: Black Clover Week - 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1912648
Comments: 17
Kudos: 74
Collections: IAmStoryteller's Best of Black Clover Fic Rec





	Brick by Brick, Beam by Beam

**Author's Note:**

> **Black Clover Week 2020 - Scars**

Yuno wakes with the sun.

The early rays of breaking dawn filter through gauzy curtains, casting thin streams of light into the attic room. It's late fall, so the house is chillier in the evenings and early mornings, so Yuno doesn't mind the newfound warmth washing against his skin, slowly heating up the world around them.

It used to be, back when he first joined the Golden Dawn and had an entire suite to himself, that he'd slip out of the bed with the early morning dew, and tip-toe to large windows overlooking rolling hills. Shades of purple and pink would light up the sky outside, and Yuno would stand silent and mesmerized for as long as he could, drinking in the beauty of his squad's namesake, a golden dawn.

Once upon a time, Asta, had woken with the sun as well.

Yuno rolls over to the side where his primary source of light is slumbering, one with soft snores and a hard back, skin that's a mixture of brown welded with leathery black hide, and the occasional pulsating, red split. There's a thick head of of grey hair, and an equally grey beard, one that feels good in his hand, in the crook of his neck, and pressed against his bare chest.

A snore hikes in pitch before petering out into a steady breath.

Yuno stifles a chuckle because of _course_ Asta's subconscious would hear him mooning. Yuno supposes it's always like this, Asta hearing Yuno's heartstrings pull a certain way before Yuno even knows what he's feeling. And so what can a man do accept embrace the facts, and keep living? Yuno's as stubborn as he is resolute with his decisions, so he slides closer to the sleeping man and snakes an arm under a rippling black and red arm, and over a sculpted waist, before pressing his forehead against the back of Asta's neck.

Yuno smiles into his skin. What can a man do, indeed.

They're forty-five years old now, retired, and surprisingly not dead. When they'd been children, the title of Wizard King seemed to be one that spelled immortality. They'd learned soon enough that it wasn't, and many times throughout their increasingly illustrious careers, they realized that Wizard King was probably the best way to get killed _quicker_ than everyone else.

And yet, they'd pushed forward. They'd been democratically elected at thirty-five, and after a seven-year rule, a new standard and one they enforced together, retired and handed over the title of Wizard King to the next generation. It was a career they were both proud of, and now they were onto the next chapter of their life together, one that found them back in Hage, inside a house that overlooked tatoe fields cultivated before they were born and trees that were older than the country itself.

Another snore, a snort, and Asta shifts in his sleep. Yuno shimmies to give him space, but finds the man abruptly turning over. Before Yuno can exhale, Asta has his own arm thrown over Yuno's bony waist, and somehow, Yuno's head is now underneath Asta's chin instead of pressed against the back of Asta's neck. Yuno huffs, because of _course_ , Asta's subconscious _has_ to interrupt Yuno's early morning contemplation, because what else would it do?

Yuno bites the inside of his cheek before smiling helplessly. Asta smells of wood and butter, a mixture of the forest bordering the Neutral Zone and the baked tatoes he so dearly loves with fresh apple butter. He kisses Asta's Adam's apple before releasing himself from the kicking octopus of a man.

Because Yuno never knows with Asta. He huffs again, and gives the snoring man a half-hearted death glare. Sometimes, Asta holds him in a warm embrace all throughout the night, so he sweats half to death because Asta's embrace is also a vice-grip from Hell, and then sometimes, Asta's kicks him so hard in his sleep that Yuno wakes up in the middle of the night wondering why his kidney is on fire. He's had to stop himself from strangling his husband _many_ times. At least Asta feels bad about it in the morning, and usually pampers him throughout the day because of it.

Once upon a time, Asta woke with the sun. When they were children, he'd be the first one out the church, and Yuno would only begin to follow once his magic had started to grow exponentially. Even then, Yuno's early mornings would be later than Asta's, because he hadn't, and still didn't, partake in strength or endurance training. Yuno's focus had always been his magic and his memory.

But no more. Asta no longer wakes with the sun. If anything, he sleeps deeply through the sunrise, and awakes with the stomping of children's feet. There's nothing to prove to anyone anymore. Now, Asta's rippling muscles and unholy strength are kept in check with his days ferrying their children all over Hage, and tending to the communal tatoe fields. He fishes, hunts, and takes on the tasks Yuno's hands and lower-back aren't fit for.

Yuno's biological clock had shifted over the last decade or so. Even time as the Golden Dawn's lieutenant didn't hit his sleep schedule like being Wizard King did. It'd been a different life. There'd been more politics involved, so Yuno had gotten more work, less sleep. The bad hours and constant stress had formed permanent eyebags that still haven't gone away with retirement. His back's gotten worse, and remains so. His hair's longer now, too.

And somehow, Yuno's fine with it all – the bad back, thin fingers, and bony waist, the automatic rise with the sun. Somehow, it all fits together.

Yuno rests a hand against Asta's beard and scratches the grey bristles. The latter snorts contently, a dopey smile on his scarred face.

And that's the one thing that _doesn't_ fit, the scar that blinds Asta's left eye, the eye that used to be green, but is now a cloudy mass hidden from the world underneath a permanently closed eyelid. Asta doesn't have green eyes anymore. He has a working red eye, courtesy of the Anti-Magic Demon, but there's no green eye matching that red eye.

And it's Yuno's fault.

Yuno's smile falters, and his fingers find themselves ghosting over the thick, horizontal line that runs from the bridge of Asta's nose and across the length of his left eye. When it was first damanged, Dr. Owen had offered to take it out and perform a transplant, but Asta had found out that a new eye for him would mean taking an eye away from someone else, and so he'd declined and left the ruined eye where it was. Yuno had fought him tooth and nail on it, had yelled at him about him _needing_ it because he was a Magic Knight, but Asta had simply laughed it off and told Yuno all's well that ends well.

He'd simply learned to work with one eye, and then he'd become a Wizard King, a one-eyed Wizard King with a sword that's still bigger than him because Asta's stuck at five feet, three inches until the day he dies.

And somewhere along the way, Yuno had asked him to marry him. To be specific, he'd asked Asta six days after their fortieth birthday, and Asta had said sure, why not? Sister Lily had rejected him just days before, and for some reason, Asta had finally thought it appropriate to cut his losses. And so they'd married. It was a big wedding, with lots of friends and their family, and then they'd built their house brick by brick, wooden beam by wooden beam, for many months after the ceremony. They didn't consummate their marriage until Noelle and Vanessa slammed the bed down in the middle of the attic, and told them to start making babies. Yuno hadn't liked the joke and frowned, but Asta with his single eye beamed with resolve, and promised his former squadmates that they'd do their duty to realm, and Yuno had to remember if Asta was ever awake for their biology lessons.

But then it was time, and Yuno had to begrudgingly admit that he'd never lain with anyone in his forty years, and apparently, neither had Asta. They'd been very bad at relations the first few months, but gradually they'd learned, and eventually, the curve of Yuno's spine fit perfectly into Asta's embrace. When Asta holds him, he forgets the dead eye.

Yuno blinks back tears, but they come anyway. He can still control his face, not a single sob will utter from his lips, but he can't control the tears. They come, even when he's not paying attention.

It's a thick scar, one that mars the eyelid as much as it does the dead eye beneath it, and it's a different sort of scarring, unlike the black hide and red cracks Asta's Demon had peppered throughout his skin. This scar, this destroyed eye, it's Yuno's fault. Yuno had been the one to charge at Zenon, had broken formation, had descended on the Spade monarch with all his rage and hurt, and then gotten pinned beneath bones spears like the foolish child that he was. Seventeen and so stupid, Yuno had wondered why Father Orsi even let him out the village.

He'd been stabbed with bones, and he'd thought he was about to die, and he'd wished so dearly that he could just say sorry to the ones he'd be leaving behind.

But then Asta had seen the bones pierced through his chest, suspending him in the air as another bone neared his throat for the killing blow. And suddenly, there had been a black beast rampaging through the Spade Monarchs' castle, a beast with the horns of a ram, a beast with brown, black, and red skin, a beast with a voice that had screamed Yuno's name with such agony that it'd brought tears to Yuno's eyes and forced his gaze to move from his almost-killer to the raging black beast.

Zenon caught Asta before the man could reach Yuno. Then he'd turned the bone that was aimed for Yuno's neck towards Asta. And then, Yuno watched as the bone cut through Asta's green eye.

The memory haunts him. It always will.

The sun's high in the sky now, and the room much warmer. Yuno wipes the stray tears from his eyes and lets out a shaky breath. Soon, the children will come knocking, asking who will make breakfast today, Pappy or Dada? Yuno wants to make it today, because he can't bear to look at Asta's dopey smile and ruined eye today, can't bear to deal with the Anti-Magic Demon's judgmental snorts and Belle's questions when she pokes at his back and asks him why he's so moody today. The Anti-Magic Demon lives with them too, Asta's other life partner, the one Yuno had once thought he was competing against. The Demon lives in its corporeal state now, out of Asta's body and grimoire. It sleeps on the second floor, next to Sister Lily's room. It still makes fun of Yuno for his childish jealousy, and Yuno lets it because he knows he deserves it.

Then there are the children they've adopted over the years, a mixture of orphans and lost children whose parents have given them up for one reason or another. They love them, and try their best to raise them, hope that if they ever leave Hage, they leave knowing that they're loved and that they will always have a home to come back to.

But there's also guilt. It eats at Yuno, and always will, because it's been almost thirty years since the Dark Triad was defeated, almost thirty years since Asta went blind in one eye. Asta's fine now. Sure, his depth perception is in the gutter, but that's why the Black Bulls never sent him on a solo mission, and why Yuno never lets him go anywhere without at least one of the older children, or the Demon, or Sister Lily. But the shame still weighs him down, clawing at his throat when he least expects it, like today, an ordinary day out of many other ordinary days, a day he should be spending thinking about groceries and play-dates for the children, but instead, he's hating himself more and more when its barely seven am.

_THUNK!_

Yuno would yell if his face wasn't on fire and his forehead throbbing with a fresh bump. A lone red eye set into a grim face stares back at him, and he realizes that, once again, Asta's subconscious heard Yuno's heartstrings before he himself did. Asta's forehead is also sporting a bump, but he doubts Asta feels it at all.

Yuno guiltily averts his gaze, but all that does is make Asta pulls him closer until they're chest to chest, and Yuno finds his heart thumping wildly.

“Why are you thinking so hard; it's literally Tuesday,” Asta gripes with disgusting morning breath. When Yuno shies away from the blast of air, Asta just pulls him closer, knowing _very_ well how stinky his morning breath was, and punishing Yuno accordingly.

“I wasn't thinking,” Yuno lies lamely, like he's twelve and not forty-five and a winner of several, prestigious awards, and also a former Wizard King.

“You're a worse liar than Noelle,” Asta points out, and now Yuno's blushing and biting his cheek, and trying to wriggle out of Asta's classic vice-grip and failing miserably.

“Stop thinking,” Asta orders him, and now Yuno's smiling, because Asta's hand is rubbing soft circles into his back.

“If I stopped thinking, who would run the house?” Yuno drawls.

“Don't get cheeky with me, bastard,” Asta huffs, and Yuno can't escape him anymore, the prickly grey beard tickles his face before chapped lips catch his neck, and Yuno succumbs to the ministrations because it's the life he's ached for, for decades, and only had the courage to ask for in the last five years.

“Seriously, stop dwelling,” Asta mumbles into his neck, holding him firmly, lovingly. “Whatever you're thinking about, it's done and over. We're here now, and that's all that matters.”

Yuno fights back another wave of tears, because only _Asta_ can make him cry, the stupid bastard, and so he nods dully and buries his nose in Asta's hair and wills the guilt away because this scar, Asta's dead green eye, Asta did it _for him_. Because somewhere, deep down, thirty years ago Asta loved him as much as Yuno loved him back.

“PAPPY, MASHED TATOES!” Yuno hears one of the children yell ecstatically from somewhere in the house. Asta's snoring into his neck now, so he'll have to get up soon and start on the mashed tatoes if he wants to stop the children from burning down the house.

“MASHED TATOES, WINDY BASTARD!” Yuno hears the Anti-Magic Demon cackle maniacally. The rushing of little feet and demonic roars filter through the house, telling Yuno that the Demon is chasing the children and keeping them entertained for just a little while longer, because the Demon is kind in its own way.

“WHY DO YOU PEOPLE KEEP EATING THE SAME THING!” That's Belle screeching now, which means one of the children probably woke her because she likes to sleep in. She has her own little fairy house that's on the first floor, right next to Father Orsi's nursery, and since Father Orsi is wheelchair-bound in his old age, Yuno surmises that it was probably their eldest who tip-toed down the stairs and went poking around Belle's magical items, and then woke her up in the process.

“Five more minutes,” Asta demands. He doesn't beg because if he wanted to, he _could_ get up, but he's choosing not to. Instead, he's choosing to caress Yuno's bony waist and too-thin arms, and doze in Yuno's stringy little neck because Asta loves Yuno.

“Five more minutes,” Yuno tells him, and Asta grunts in agreement, and he's snoring soon enough, and Yuno is holding him, holding his beloved with all of his scars, his hero, his Asta.

He kisses the top of Asta's head and breathes in the woody scent before smiling once more.

* * *


End file.
